Bulletins
Loving God and Neighbor
Sunday, October 25th, 2026
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Mary, St. Patrick, St. Philip Parishes
Mailing address for all three parishes: PO Box 35, Seneca WI 54654
Website: https://www.catholicchurchesofncc.com
Confessions: Normally, 30 minutes before
every Mass and by appointment.
Normal Monthly Eucharistic Adoration:
St. Patrick: First Friday after the 8:30 AM Mass
St. Philip: First Sunday after the 10:30 AM Mass
Mass Intentions This Week:
Sat. Oct. 24 7:00 PM St. Patrick + Zachary Stevenson (Family)
Sun. Oct 25 7:30 AM St. Patrick + Arnold & Patricia Stoehr (John Kane)
9:00 AM St. Mary Living & Deceased Members of my Parishes
10:30 AM St. Philip + All Souls
Mon. Oct. 26 8:30 AM St. Patrick Blessings for Father Tom (Bishop Gerard)
Tue. Oct. 27 8:30 AM St. Philip + All Souls
Wed. Oct. 28 8:30 AM St. Patrick + Casemir Gawenda (Kenneth & Margie Gawenda)
Thur. Oct. 29 8:30 AM St. Mary + All Deceased Priest & Religious
Fri.. Oct. 30 8:30 AM St Patrick + All Souls
Sat. Oct. 31 7:00 PM St. Patrick Special Intentions of Fr. Tom
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sun. Nov. 01 7:30 AM St. Patrick Living & Deceased Members of my Parishes
9:00 AM St Mary + All Forgotten Souls
10:30 AM St. Philip + Gloria Gorel (Ruthann Gundenschwager)
Pastor: Fr. Tom Huff – Rectory 608-734-3252 email: frtomhuff@gmail.com
Bookkeeper, Bulletin, Mass Intentions, Membership: Kevin Murray 608-391-0434 or 608-734-3931
email: secretary@ncc.diolcparish.org
Bulletin Information Deadline: Mondays at 6:00 PM.
For Mass Intentions, if donating by check, please make all checks payable to: St. Mary Stipend Fund. To avoid errors, please print clearly the intention, who the intention is by, and if a specific date for Mass is requested. Thank You
To Sign into Formed.org: use St. Mary in Gays Mills as the parish and use the password Mary123!
St. Philip Announcements:
Food Pantry Donations can be left in the basket in the rear of the Church.
St. Philip Candles: Contact Bonnie Murphy. The cost is $5 per candle.
Still selling Raffle Tickets: This is the biggest fundraiser for St. Philip's Church every year. We need your help to make this a successful fundraiser again this year. If you need more tickets; there are tickets at the back of the church or contact Bonnie Murphy. Thank you to everyone who has been busy selling tickets! A Big THANK YOU to everyone who donated raffle prizes! We all work together to make this a success!
St. Mary Announcements:
Rosary – 30 minutes before Mass
First Sunday Potluck Brunch after Mass each first Sunday of the month. All are welcome, dish to share is appreciated, but not required. Next potluck is Sunday, November 1st.
Saint Mary’s is open 7:00am – 7:00pm daily. Please feel free to come and pray and light a candle if you would like.
Food Pantry Donations can be left in the basket in the rear of the Church.
It was time to retire our old organ. We have purchased a new electronic keyboard/organ so we can all continue to enjoy the beautiful liturgical music we have all come to expect. The new electronic keyboard/organ cost the parish just under three thousand dollars. Any help in covering the cost of this purchase would go a long way in helping St. Mary’s to remain solvent and ensuring that we will all be able to worship together here at St. Mary’s for years to come. To date $0.00 has been donated. Thank you.
St. Mary's service group will be meeting on Tuesday, October 27th at 6pm in the church basement. We will be reviewing the Apple Fest Food Stand fundraiser. All are welcome to attend, provide feedback, and share your ideas for next year.
St. Patrick Announcements:
Thank you to our confirmation students as well as Derrick and Britney Joy for cleaning up our cemetery! It looks great! Thank you for being good stewards of our parish! God bless you!
Tri-Parish Announcements:
When writing checks to donate to Mission Sunday, please make out your check to your parish when giving the donation envelope in the Sunday Collection.
Tri-Parish Adult Faith Study will be Tuesday, October 27th at 4:00 PM at St. Mary Parish Hall.
The Weekly Bulletin is available on our parishes website, this is the link to the bulletin page, updated every Friday: https://www.catholicchurchesofncc.com/bulletins
DIVINE MERCY IN MY SOUL - St. Faustina writes, “Now I understand well that what unites our soul most closely to God is self-denial; that is, joining our will to the will of God.” (Diary 462) “ … and the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.” (John 8:28-29)
Income from Last Week:
St. Mary
Adults
475.00
Plate
109.00
Mission Sunday
120.00
Total
704.00
St. Philip
Adults
830.00
Plate
192.75
Votives
35.10
Raffle Ticket Sales
175.00
Raffle Prize Donation
300.00
Mission Sunday
245.00
Total
1,777.85
St. Patrick
Adults
255.00
Plate
200.00
Youth
1.00
Votives
30.00
Mission Sunday
345.00
Total
831.00
From the Priest’s Corner: Loving God and Our Neighbor
The cross of Jesus, in this fallen world, is what love of God and neighbor leads to and looks like. Packed away in this short scene is the unpalatable truth that we too must take up our various crosses if we are to love our Heavenly Father and those around us in a Christ-like way.
We can expect ridicule, scorn and sometime even persecution, because that's the reaction love of God and neighbor triggers in those who have learned to hate and those who have replaced God with themselves or other things. If we are really serious in practicing love of God and neighbor, we shall need the power and grace that comes from Jesus and His Precious Wounds.
Without living true love of God and neighbor, we are frauds and do not live up to our sacred calling as Christians. The Gospel today challenges us to reflect upon our spiritual life and to reflect honestly on our daily words and actions. Our love of God is hinged to our exterior actions towards our neighbor. If your love for God is not fully alive within our heart, there is no way that we can love our neighbor in a Christ-like manner or be truly holy as a Christian.
It is not enough to mean well. That is to underestimate the forces of evil that confront us in today’s world. We shall need God’s grace, the power of Jesus and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. We will need to be active in the Church and often receiving its life-giving Sacraments, especially the strength and grace received from the Eucharist.
A crucifix hanging in our home can become a daily reminder to us of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, revealing His great love for His Heavenly Father and for each one of us. The crucifix shows us what it looks like for a person to love God with all their heart, soul and mind and what it looks like to love one’s neighbor as oneself. If the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments, then the law and the prophets are most fully revealed when the Son of God hangs upon the Cross, to which these commandments have brought Him.
Tri-Parish Prayer List – We want to pray for the sick and others in our parishes who need ongoing prayer. To be placed on or to place someone on our prayer list, please call: Sue Peterson 608-735-4865, Bonnie Murphy 608-386-4954, or Ica Boylen 608-734-3287.
Ron McCormick
Tyrone Beaty
Michael Monehen
Rosanne Feye
David Jacobsen
Steve Trussoni
Janice Coggins
Sequohay Dockry
Mary (Moran) Orvis
Marian Beall
Karen McCoy
Jenna Friar
Maria Camacho
Bob Wharton
Jeri Gorman
Loyde Beers
Lisa Glass
Greg Roth
Wade Dull
Kiara Meier
Shirley Whitby
Shay Vought
Rick Boehm
Tom Gillette
Rita Helgerson
Jeff Croke
Joyce Fisher
Gary “Bucky” George
Marvin Hansen
Claudia Safley
Eve Trussoni
Rob Donohue
Larry Boehm
Todd Safley
John & Betty Lynch
Rhiana Morga
Joshua Ecklund
William Wright
Rob Tittle
Gene & Mary Murphy
Linda Cowan
Jerry Boehm
Phyllis Bell
Donnie Moran
Jess Zimple
Lea Whitby
Nicholas Currich
Robin Williams
Alan Whitby
Jenna Peterson
Janet Black Yznaga
Joni Peterson
Jeanette Wallenhorst
Mason Evens
Becky Kramer
Matt Donavan
Susan Monehen
Isaiah Caya107th and the Maintenance Corp.
Halloween Is a Catholic Word
Start with the word itself, because the word gives the whole thing away. "Halloween" is a worn-down contraction of "All Hallows' Eve." A hallow is a holy one. A saint. All Hallows' Eve is the evening before All Hallows' Day, which the Church calls the Solemnity of All Saints, kept every year on November 1st.
So the night is named after the feast it points toward. It is the eve of the feast, which the Church has traditionally kept as a vigil. The same way Christmas Eve matters because Christmas does, October 31st matters on the Church's calendar because November 1st does. The Church has kept the November 1 feast across the West for well over a thousand years.
And it does not stop there. November 2nd is All Souls' Day, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, when the Church prays for the dead. Taken together, the three days are traditionally called Hallowtide.
You will hear that Halloween is a pagan festival the Church painted over: that the Celts kept October 31st as a night when the dead walked, and that All Saints' Day was moved to November 1 to cover it. That story gets repeated every October, and the historical record does not carry it. Halloween is Christian in origin, and specifically Catholic.
Christians were keeping a common feast for the martyrs by the fourth century. Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in St. Peter's to all the saints and fixed November 1st as its feast, and Pope Gregory IV then ordered the whole Church to keep it on that day. A vigil the evening before is simply what the Church does ahead of a great feast, the same way it keeps Christmas Eve.
Samhain, the Irish festival the pagan story leans on, was an end-of-summer gathering in one country, and the medieval records give no evidence that it was a major festival across the Celtic world or that it carried any religious ceremony at all. No walking dead, no thinning veil, no Celtic New Year. Those details were supplied centuries later by folklorists, and most of the modern customs are younger than five hundred years.
Reclaiming Halloween is not a protest and it does not require cancelling anything. It mostly means letting the Church's own meaning become part of your three day celebration.
Remember the saints. The feast is the point. Read one saint's life at the table on October 31. Let a child pick a saint to dress as and be able to say why. The saints were real people who did loved God and lived holy lives, and they are far more interesting than anything sold in a store with a plastic mask.
Pray for the dead. This is the most distinctly Catholic thing you can do this week. The Church has always prayed for the faithful departed, and All Souls' Day exists for exactly that. Say the Eternal Rest prayer for someone in your own family by name. It is the prayer the "Remember the Dead: Eternal Rest" design carries.
Teach children about Heaven and holiness. All Saints' Day gives a straight answer to the question the season keeps raising. People die, and the destination the Church holds out is holiness and Heaven. That conversation lands better on a night children are already thinking about it.
